With Amazon Prime Day less than a week away, it’s a good time to start thinking about the things you’ll want to look for once the deal wave hits. Everything from gadgets to clothes to household necessities will be on sale during the 48-hour event, and if you’re a Prime member, you’ll have access to all of the deals on Amazon’s site. Engadget will be surfacing all of the best tech deals we can find – both on Amazon and elsewhere – but there are some important things to know ahead of time so you can get exactly what you want out of this year’s Prime Day.

When is Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day 2022 will begin at 12AM PT on Tuesday, July 12, and it will end 11:59PM PT on Wednesday, July 13. The two-day shopping event will surface exclusive deals for Prime members, which means you’ll have to be a Prime subscriber on Prime Day to take advantage of any of the savings. Amazon still offers a 30-day free trial to new Prime subscribers, so you can start your free trial now and participate in the event.

If you don’t pay for Prime and have no intention of doing so, you should still check out Amazon on Prime Day for sales that are available to all shoppers. Plus, other retailers like Walmart, Best Buy and Target will have their own competing Prime Day sales during that time frame, too.

Amazon Prime Day deals

Amazon Prime Day may officially be only two days, but for the past few years, the company has started pushing out deals well before the official event kicks off. That’s true this year, too. You can find a number of items on sale right now as part of early Prime Day sales. Unsurprisingly, some of the best early deals are on Amazon devices like Eero routers, Fire TVs and more.

Speaking of, Prime Day is the best time of year to pick up Amazon gadgets. You can safely bet on things like Echo speakers, Kindle e-readers and Fire TV devices to be at record-low prices for Prime Day, so if you’ve had your eye on one of those items, now’s the time to get it. Prime Day is only matched by Black Friday in its discounts, so while that means you will likely have another chance to get that smart speaker for dirt cheap, it probably won’t be until the holiday shopping season.

Make no mistake, Amazon gadgets will not be the only items discounted on Prime Day. You’ll find clothes, shoes, household items, appliances, accessories and more on sale, but here at Engadget, we’ll naturally be focusing on electronics. We expect this year’s Prime Day to be like last year’s, in that it will bring big discounts on headphones, earbuds, gaming accessories, SSDs and microSD cards, robot vacuums and more.

It’s also worth mentioning the types of deals you can expect to see on Prime Day. Some deals will be live for the entire 48 hours, while others will be day one- or day two-only sales. Those are the hardest to predict, since Amazon usually does not give any indication how long a given sale will last. Our recommendation is to buy the things you’re most keen on as soon as you see them drop in price – that will ensure you get it while the discount is available, and while the item is still in stock.

You can also expect to see some flash sales happen during Prime Day. Thankfully, these are typically clearly labeled with the amount of time remaining to grab the deal noted on the product page. In our experience, only a handful of these flash sales are actually worth your money, but if you see something that’s been on your wishlist drop in price for the next few hours, it’s in your best interest to grab it immediately.

How to prep for Prime Day

We’ve alluded to this already, but it’s best to go into Amazon Prime Day as prepared as possible. That essentially means knowing exactly what you want to look for so you stay focused and avoid distractions. The whole of Amazon.com will be overwhelming on Prime Day, so the less time you spend aimlessly browsing, the more your wallet will thank you later.

Two simple things you can do ahead of Prime Day are make a list and bookmark a price tracker. For the former, take note of the most important items you want to pick up on Prime Day. You can either do this the old-fashioned way on a sticky note, or you can use Amazon’s wish list feature. For the latter, add the items you want to buy on Prime Day to your wish list (or, even better, make a dedicated wishlist with only your Prime Day desirables) and return to that list during the shopping event. Not only will you have everything you want all in one place, but you’ll also be able to see which of those items are cheaper on Prime Day than they were when you originally added them to your list.

As for the price tracker, sites like CamelCamelCamel let you monitor the price of specific items on Amazon. You can check out price history charts on the site and you can make your own price drop alerts, receiving emails when something you want gets a discount. CamelCamelCamel also has some browser extensions you can download so you don’t have to navigate away from a product page to check its price history.

We know that not everyone – not even every Prime member – will be flocking to Amazon during Prime Day. Whether you find such blatant displays of consumerism off putting or you simply don’t want to give Amazon more of your money, there are plenty of reasons why you might be skipping Prime Day all together. But that doesn’t mean you have to skip all of the sales that will be happening on July 12th and 13th. Retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and others will all have competing Prime Day sales and many of them will match sales you’ll find on Amazon. We recommend checking them out if you want to pick up a couple of things for less without spending money on Amazon.

Engadget will be covering both days of Prime Day, so if you have a lot of tech on your to-buy list, be sure to check back here on Prime Day for the best tech sales we could find. We’ll be sure to include gadgets from across the board – from headphones to robot vacuums to gaming gear – plus the best “anti-Prime Day” deals you can find from other retailers. You can also follow the @EngadgetDeals Twitter account and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter to stay up to date on the latest discounts. The volume of deals will be daunting, but we sift through them all and pick out the best ones to make Prime Day a bit easier for you.